Saturday, May 12, 2012

Another success story, we used our boom tent and I sailed one-up with the spinnaker (well sort of).

Donna was inside the cabin when I decided it was time to hoist the spinnaker with no help and see what would happen. The hoist went well as I was able to get forward for an instant to get to the halyard, I had already squared up Shazza and I was running pretty much dead down wind. I hoisted and then pulled the track then sheeted on--all good.

Unfortunately the drop was not so pretty as the tack line did not want to run freely so I ended up with the kite (un-torn for once) in the cockpit and facing head to wind--oh well I will try again soon.

It's taken almost two years to finally complete 'Shazza' as I had imaged her before I had even started building. Thanks to a lot of people, at the top of the list is the artist Tahlia and her boyfriend Josh, my Donna, and Jon of 'Critical Twist' (for a kick up the you know what to get onto finishing Shazza properly after seeing the great job done on his hull and keel bulb art).

I always wanted to have artwork on the cabin of 'Shazza' and now we finally have it. The artist did all the work on Shazza in-between her day job and we all underestimated the amount of work it would take to get the result she was happy with--five or six weeks of afternoon and weekend work.

The brief to the artist was simple; the boat name is Shazza, keep it simple, make it colourful, and make it happy-----end result is all of these things and then some. Tahlia included some very personal additions at the very end without asking directly; she assumed correctly that they would be well accepted. One of which was to put my old dogs names of the cabin side. These two are no longer with me but have their ashes built into the bow of the hull where I made a carbon fibre box for them to rest in.

I will be happy to work as her un-paid agent for more commissioned work any time.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Donna and I decided to try something new by participating in a Bribie Island Sailing Club round of racing. It was held on Saturday and consisted of 2 races.

The tide really runs through Pumistone Passage in-between Bribie and Bongaree?. Anyway it took us just over an hour to get over the start line against the tide and we were third over the start line out of about 10 boats. We had a great race with the other boats and some very tight racing with Barry Colson's "Endangered Species" who won both races on line honours with us 2nd in each race giving away 1 minute in the first and 3 minutes in the second.

The locals were very welcoming and showed us a good day and some funny stories.

Sunday was the beginning of Shazza's end of season tart-up. I am finally doing what I wanted to do day one with the paint scheme on Shazza. The grey/ pink etc in gone--as it should be. The latest and last colour is a lavender epoxy paint (finally putting down the quality stuff).

The pink stripe will be coming off ( I hope) and the bow/transom will be getting a touch-up as almost 2 years of bumps and scrapes are starting to show.

The mast is also getting a decent coat of paint (not sure of the colour, but probably white or lavender).

The icing on the cake will be a commissioned art work on the cabin, I have been wanting to do this since day one. We had some stickers made up and put on the hull sides of Shazza not that long ago but it was always a compromise as to what I really wanted which was the cabin done and the hull left plain.

I am rather excited about the art work as I am giving the artist a very open brief and lots of licence to do what she pleases. I have seen her work on a surf board and loved it so it should be interesting what I end up with.

Deck painted and the cabin about to get a new coat of paint ready for the artist.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

We had a good race in 15 odd knots +/- reaching and spinnaker run. It was just the two of us and we really showed just what a treat of a boat the i550's are. I had major reservations before the race as to whether just the two of us would be able to keep Shazza upright in that kind of breeze on a tight reach, but not only did we keep it upright--we went really really well and just took off leaving the rest of the fleet for dead.

Then we set the kite and took off even more, right up until the block at the end of the spinnaker pole broke and we could no longer possibly hoist the kite. We ended up last again but we showed just what Shazza could do and really enjoyed it and gave the other guys & girls something to worry about when we next meet.

Notice a mast that looks different to the rest? Shazza looked very small even beside a 6 metre boat, I hadn't realised just how small the i550 was until yesterday (Saturday)

The Colson we tied up beside can happily fit 4 adult males in the cabin with plenty of room which is lucky because it rained just after we all tied up and we all climbed into Barry's boat to get out of the rain.

The race competition came from Barry's boat and the Ross 650 directly behind Shazza on the outside, but it was the Barry Colson (designed & built) that was really the only boat that kept in touch with us while we were running hot. Oh, and Donna was steering when we had the kite up. I trust Donna's steering under kite 100%, she even kept the boat upright when the block on the spinnaker pole let go and we suddenly had a kite trying to drag us sideways and down while the breeze was still around the 15kt mark.

A quick video of Donna sailing the boat a couple of weekends ago. Donna still can't sail to windward for love or money but she is a natural under kite.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Huey did not play nice again this year. Last year was a survival race, this year was a test of patience. It was bad enough that the breeze never got over 10 knots, it was also bad enough that the breeze was right on the nose for over 2/3 of the race distance of 50nm+-, but we also had to contend with a tide in some areas that was edging 3 to 4 knots when we only had a couple of knots of wind. We saw at least two boats give up the race in one area as they could not make any forward progress at all.

On a brighter note, the ice-box worked very well for the day and was still keeping the food and drinks cold when we finally finished the race after 11 hours and 20 minutes of "racing". We did not see any other boats after about 5pm and I'm pretty sure we came in dead last but happy that we had finished and not given up and motored home like we saw a couple of boats do.

Not much needed doing for most of the race, it was windward work in 2 to 10 knots.